


Theories of Relativity

by marylex



Category: Oz (HBO)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-04
Updated: 2011-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marylex/pseuds/marylex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe everything else just felt slow because Tim was moving so fast.</p><p>Written for the Oz Gift of the Magi Challenge, 2010.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Theories of Relativity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [natlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natlet/gifts).



Sean’s the first person Tim sees when he opens his eyes, and it’s no surprise, because Sean’s hands were the last clear thing Tim remembers before he went under, hot blood slick against his palm and Sean’s palm hot over his fingers and a wave of pain and nausea crashing as shock gave way to the overhyped clarity of adrenaline, everything too bright and loud and fast, time slowed down, or maybe he was just moving so fast that it felt like he was moving slow.

He remembers the shock of impact, the punch that drove the breath from his lungs in a startled cry, the hangfire moment before the puncture of the shank registered, the suspended still-bloodless pinpoint lucidity as abused nerve endings drew breath to shriek; he remembers falling on his ass on the concrete, and the bone-deep chill, because it’s impossible to keep that goddamn prison warm in winter, cold radiating up from the ground it sits on like the grave. He remembers hearing his own name, turning to see Omar, Fucking _Omar_ , and the sound of Em City erupting into chaos around him, everything too bright and fast and loud, time slowed down.

He remembers rolling his head in the cradle of Sean’s hand and the firm pressure of Sean’s other hand, holding everything together, holding Tim together, helping Tim hold himself together, on top of bunched fabric sticky with blood and the sudden hole in his guts.

Sean’s hands were the last clear thing Tim remembers before he went under, and so it’s no surprise when he’s the first thing Tim sees when he opens his eyes.

He’s sitting on a chair beside Tim’s bed, drawn in on himself in the chilly antiseptic air, stark against white walls, and so still, all watchful eyes under a tangle of messy hair. There’s something not quite right, something Tim can’t put his finger on through the haze of drugs - hello, codeine, my old friend, he thinks dazedly and spares a moment of lazy ire for Scott Ross, That Fuck, the last guy to land him here, because this must be Benchley Memorial. He remembers this place, the white walls and the chilly air, like being stuck inside a refrigerator and the door vacuum-sealed shut, remembers the taste of antiseptic on his tongue and gagging as they shoved the wooden depressor to the back of his mouth, into his throat, but no, that’s not right, that’s County Community he’s remembering, Wyoming County Community Hospital, the time he had his tonsils out when he was 5.

That can’t be right, because that was before he knew Sean, and Sean’s here, pale solemn face watching Tim from the bedside, and Tim remembers the winter of bronchitis, 15 years old and three weeks hacking up a lung, when Sean sat in his room during the worst weekend, by his bedside, curiously watchful, settled in like he was hibernating, or, or, meditating, storing up energy, even though Tim would have expected him to be vibrating with the need to get out, to do something, anything. Sean was one of those kids who never got sick, or who just pushed on through it if he did, really, because now that Tim thinks about it, now that he remembers, it’s ridiculous to act like anyone in a house with as many kids as the Murphy home wasn’t passing around every germ that made its way through the kindergarten classrooms of Attica Elementary and the Sunday school sessions at St. Vincent’s, and Carleen - Carly - was always coughing and snuffly with something. It’s just that Sean seemed so solid stolid, he never seemed sick, never seemed like the kind of guy who ever was sick, it’s like Tim’s brain must have smoothed over those parts. But then, so did Sean, even as they were happening, pushing through, and Tim’s not sure Sean would even know what the inside of a hospital looked like, if not for Tim.

Sean doesn’t like them, Tim can tell, and not even just the way most people don’t like them, thick with memories and laced with pain and sickness and injury. Sean doesn’t like them because they make him feel out of his depth, because he probably wouldn’t even know what the inside of a hospital looked like if not for Tim, because he has so little experience with them, doesn’t even know how they work. Marjorie Murphy’s heart attack had been swift and massive and over almost as soon as it happened, and as for Sean’s father ... well, James Murphy never met a doctor he trusted, not after his daughter, not after his wife, even as the cancer ate him from the inside out, and he’d pulled into his own home and shut his doors to die when the time came.

But this time, Sean’s there, he’s here, and it’s no surprise, because the last clear thing Tim can remember is Sean’s hands on him, sticky with warm blood. There were other hands, hands and voices and sirens, the jabbing prick of some kind of IV, and the smothering obstruction of an oxygen mask before the flow of cool air, and the efficient tones of EMTs, and his feet and fingers fucking freezing, but it’s all fragmented and fragmentary, blurring together, nothing like Sean’s hands cradling his head and pressing firm into the sick ache of his stomach like pressing on a bruise to the bone. He remembers Said looking down from the second level - not godlike, no god could look so shocked, could have fallen so far from omniscience - and Arif, and Tidd ... no. Salah. He was Salah now, Tim remembers, Salah Udeen.

He remembers Sean’s voice, low, as he sat cross-legged and cradled Tim’s head in his lap, in the curve of his palm - _It’s gonna be OK, Tim. It’s gonna be OK._ \- and the feel of Diane’s fingers in his hair and the acrid taste of smoke on his tongue in the darkness, but no, that’s not right, that was the last time, the riot, before Sean came to Oz, the time with Scott Ross, That Fuck, and Jesus, how much codeine have they given him?

He tries to corral his thoughts, tries to keep them from wandering all over the place, stretching and pulling like taffy at the Wyoming County Fair when they were kids, and he tries to focus on Sean, because this time Sean’s there, he’s here, and it’s no surprise, because his hands were the last clear thing Tim can remember before he went under, thanks to Omar, Fucking _Omar_. Sean’s here, now, when Tim wakes up, no surprise that he’s sitting straight-backed in the hospital chair at Tim’s bedside, alert and watchful for all he’s got one knee pulled up, chin resting on it, hand curled around his shin as he studies Tim silently with big eyes, because Sean doesn’t like hospitals, doesn’t have much experience with them, so it’s no surprise he’s freaked out. Or maybe that’s down to Tim, because Sean’s here now, sitting, waiting for Tim to wake up, and he’s still, still and quiet, and maybe that should tell Tim something about how serious it was, because there’s something not right, something Tim can’t put his finger on. It must be bad, though, must have been bad, serious, if Sean’s so still, so watchful, poised, big dark eyes looking at Tim from under a tangled fall of messy hair, one hand fisted tight in the side seam of his jeans, the other curled around his shin, holding his knee pressed to his chest, frozen with something Tim is pretty sure is caution, if not fear. He wonders how bad it is, if he’s scared Sean like this, and through the drugs, he can feel the dull sick ache in his stomach like pressing on a bruise, a bruise to the bone.

It’s like something will go wrong if Sean looks away, like he’s afraid to look away, afraid to take his eyes off Tim, sitting sentry, curled but upright in the chair beside Tim’s bed, because he doesn’t know how to deal with hospitals, doesn’t have much experience with them.

Tim rolls his head on the pillow so he can meet Sean’s eyes, and he lies there a minute while they study each other, while he struggles to form words under the muffling blanket of the drugs - hello, codeine, my old friend.

“Hey,” Tim finally says, voice broken and hoarse and croaking.

Sean blinks at him as Tim winces at the cottonmouth and at the ache in his stomach like a bruise, like a rotten tooth, and it’s only at the sound of his own voice, his grownup voice that Tim realizes what’s wrong with this picture.

“Sean?” he says to the boy sitting in the chair, 12 years old with a messy tangle of hair falling into wide eyes.

Tim tries to sit up suddenly, and that’s a fuck of a mistake, pain lancing through him, and however much codeine they gave him was clearly _not enough_. An agonized sound claws its way out of his throat, and then he’s swearing, low, steady, spitting out a constant stream of good hard angry Anglo-Saxon consonants in the futile hope that he can spit out some of the pain with them, like spitting out blood, copper and salt and raw meat, and then there’s a nurse by his bedside and a pill under his tongue.

 _Do you see him?_ he thinks, wants to ask, rolling his head again to catch sight of the boy who’s backed himself into the corner of the room, out of the way, teeth in his bottom lip like Tim’s not seen in 25 years because Sean’s never that hesitant, not anymore, but the words come out slurred and Tim’s eyelids feel heavy under the swell of the pain and the blood loss and the codeine, and he’s just so tired.

The last thing he feels before he goes under is Sean’s hand on his, fingers hot and a little clammy against Tim’s own, a secret pocket of warmth in the chilly antiseptic air.

•••

Tim’s lying on his couch, drifting, when he looks over and sees Sean again, drifting on the cloud of Vicodin because he’s a dumbass who thinks he’s up to a pickup game just out of the hospital after being stabbed in the gut. Murphy tried to point that out to him, Tim vaguely remembers, right before Tim told him to fuck off and Murphy called him an asshole. But Brass, Brass was willing to play, so now Tim’s spent days achy from practice sessions and staples pulling and tender new skin stretching, so he’s drifting on the last of the Vicodin as he meets Sean’s eyes.

Sean’s tucked catty-cornered into the recliner, which isn’t reclined, just rocked back under the slight weight of him, one of his legs curled up under him and his eyes still watchful if not quite wary. Tim watches him lower a hand to curl around his knee and realizes he’s caught Sean chewing on his cuticles, one of his absent habits, one of his tells, when he’s deep in thought or concentration - or it used to be, at least, not something he’s done for years, now - and Tim wonders how long he’s been lying there half-dozing, with Sean staring at him, watching him, sitting sentry, quiet and still.

“You wouldn’t play ball with me,” Tim says, waving a hand in what’s supposed to be an emphatic gesture - something of an accusatory pointing with his pointer finger - but just ends up looking vague. He’s not sure if it’s because it only looks vague or because it actually is vague, because he’s not sure if the Vicodin’s fucking with his sight or his hand-waving ability.

Maybe both.

What was he thinking about?

Oh, yeah - Sean.

Sean’s still watching him, curiosity lacing the tangled mix of emotions in his gaze, as Tim drops his hand back down on his chest, because it’s _heavy_.

“You didn’t ask me,” Sean says, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes like he’s trying to suss out the fragments of thought stretching and pulling like taffy in Tim’s head. “To play ball with you. Maybe I’m too short.”

Tim snorts, returning the scrutiny through the one eye he’s got open. And OK, Sean is a lot smaller than Tim remembers. He’s always seemed so sturdy, up to and including now, the grownup Murphy who Tim sees everyday, sturdy and solid and unchanging, but maybe Tim was just changing so fast that everything else seemed slow, because this kid - he’s so much smaller than Tim remembers.

He doesn’t even remember knowing Sean when he was this young.

“I did,” he protests. “I did ask. You told me to fuck off. Anyway, what are you talking about? You’re going to be All-State in a few years.”

He thinks there’s some reason he shouldn’t have said that, and he turns his head to study the ceiling, like if he squints hard enough at the rough stucco pattern, he’ll remember. He’s pretty sure he sounds like he’s the one who’s 12 years old. He knows he gets like this when Sean won’t fall in line, the same way he got when Ellie wouldn’t, when Leo won’t give him what he wants. It’s never something he’s particularly proud of later, in hindsight, in the aftermath, but he never can seem to stop himself, even as he realizes he’s doing it again. His tantrums, Ellie used to call it, winding him up even more, like he was five years old and stamping his feet on the ground. He had the same irrational reaction when Sean took over Em City, like Sean wanted to steal his baby, because Tim’s always been kind of shit at sharing his toys, always wanted to be the one calling the shots, but what was the guy supposed to do, Tim asks himself, so soon after leaving Attica for Tim? Sean was holding everything together, helping Tim hold everything together - and what an asshole Tim is, just like Murphy called him. The therapist helped him figure that out, he remembers. Maybe he ought to go back and talk to her some more.

Or, hell. If he’s going to hallucinate, going to have some version of Murphy sitting there, sitting here, now, staring him down, trying to see into his head - even a version that’s 12 years old - why not take the chance for some free therapy?

“You didn’t come see me in the hospital, either,” he says, still studying the ceiling. “Gloria came to see me, but you didn’t.”

She was _fighting_ with me, and she still bothered to come see me, he doesn’t say, not out loud, at least, but then he thinks muzzily of Wick, mouth and lower jaw smeared with blood, right frontal lobe of his brain blown out by an experiment gone wrong, and he remembers, oh, yeah. He and Gloria have fucked since the last time they fought, haven’t they?

Tim pauses to consider, trying to grab hold of the slippery thoughts as they wisp to the corners of his brain, trying to hold them still for a minute so he can poke at them. He’s fighting with Murphy, too, he thinks - _you can be a real asshole, Tim_ \- but apparently Sean’s still here, now, watching and waiting for Tim to wake up. Either that, or Tim wants Murphy to be there so bad that his brain will conjure up a drug-fueled version of him. A _12-year-old_ drug-fueled version of him.

On reflection - what little reflection he can manage right now - Tim thinks that’s pathetically unsurprising, actually.

He and Sean haven’t fucked since they fought, right? He wrinkles his brow, perplexed.

Right. He and Sean have never fucked.

“What are you even talking about?” Sean’s incredulous voice breaks across Tim’s thoughts, recliner squeaking in soft emphasis. When Tim rolls his head to look over, eyelids heavy from the Vicodin, Sean’s leaning forward, and Tim’s momentarily worried that some of the stuff just going around in his head also was coming out of his mouth. “I was at the hospital. That’s where I ended up the last time this ... thing happened. Whatever’s going on.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t _know_.” Sean sounds frustrated now, if still wary, spreading his hands, palms up, to shrug. “I woke up and I was at the hospital, and I woke up and I was here, and ... what do you want, man? Why’d you _bring_ me here?”

“Sean ... I didn’t ... I don’t ...” The Vicodin’s weighing down his eyelids like stones, even as the rest of his body drifts free, and Tim blinks over at the boy, slow, feeling lizard-like, sluggish, eyelids lowering once, twice, three times before he can’t open them again.

Sean doesn’t seem panicked, he thinks in his cocoon of darkness. Sean doesn’t seem panicked, even though he’s wary, and maybe a little freaked out, and that’s no surprise, because Sean doesn’t panic. Little Aidan Murphy would have choked to death on a penny 25 years ago and Deputy Myron Ellis would have taken a .357 bullet to the back of the head during a botched prisoner transfer 11 years ago and Tim would have bled out on Em City concrete three weeks ago if Sean panicked in a crisis. He remembers the firm pressure of Sean’s hands over the ache in his stomach, like a bruise, like a rotten tooth, remembers the slick feel of his own blood and muzzle flare in the darkness, tastes acrid smoke on his tongue and feels Diane’s hands in his hair, but no, that’s not right, that was the last time, and he wonders somewhere far away, how the riot would have gone down if Sean had been in Oz, back then.

Everybody always thinks Tim’s the guy with the plan, but really, he’s lost without Sean, isn’t he? Sean holding everything together, holding Tim together, helping Tim hold himself together.

“Sherpa,” he slurs in Sean’s direction, and he’d tense against Ellie’s shoulder smack for being a dick if he could make his body move at all, but the Vicodin’s kicked in with a vengeance, and he vaguely recalls that Ellie’s not here anymore, anyway, Ellie never was here when Sean was there, and Sean was never there when Ellie was here, and they’ve never even met. Tim can’t remember why, exactly, because he doesn’t think he kept them apart on purpose.

Right?

There’s a presence at his side, now, quick light breaths, displaced air and body heat, because Sean’s there, he’s here, now, and his fingers are warm, a little bit clammy, over Tim’s cold hands lying folded on his stomach like he’s resting in his coffin.

“Tim? Is that really you?” The voice sounds so fucking young that it almost breaks Tim’s heart.

He wakes up late the next morning, still on the couch, with a blanket thrown over him that he doesn’t remember getting. He can’t figure out why, if he went to the bedroom for it, he didn’t just get into bed while he was there. Fucking meds, he thinks later, in the break room, right before he catches his cup on the edge of the sink and spills coffee all over himself, and then he’s too busy cursing to worry about anything else. He looks up from his ruined pants to find Murphy offering him a handful of paper towels, and he studies the other man’s face a minute, not even sure what he’s looking for, before he finally takes them.

“You’re still an asshole,” Murphy tells him, leaning back against the counter, legs crossed at the ankle, watching Tim trying to wipe himself down. He takes a sip of his own coffee, raising his eyebrows over the rim of the styrofoam cup.

“I know,” Tim says.

“Brass looks good, though,” Murphy says.

“Well, thank _God_. Because just between you and me? I don’t think I’m that good at basketball anymore.”

“What d’you mean, anymore?”

•••

Tim’s three beers in - which is a bad fucking idea, because what he really wants to do is break out the new Vicodin ‘script, but now he can’t, because he’s three beers in and Gloria will kick his ass if he mixes alcohol and the meds - when he opens his eyes to find Sean bending over him.

He’s sprawled on the couch again, because when Leo helped him into his apartment, Tim insisted he was fine and he didn’t need to go to bed and everything was fine, but now he can feel the distant throbbing of his heartbeat in his _face_ and against the inside of his skin, over his ribs and hips where the new bruises are spreading, thanks to Omar, Fucking _Omar_ , and maybe, yeah, it would’ve been a good idea to just end up in bed, to begin with.

“You look like shit,” Sean says, scowling down at him, hair sticking out in unruly tufts all over his head like he’s had his fingers in it. It’s longer than last time - he’ll get his Ma to buzzcut it short soon, when summer kicks in, Tim knows. In a few years, the annual ritual will drive Dina Nagel up a wall - she always liked to wind the curls around her fingers, when they were long enough, even though the only time she could get Sean to sit still for her to do it was four-beers-deep at a kegger, and Tim remembers how neatly Sean would slip out from under her touch as she sat on the desk-top behind him before the bell rang in study hall, flared jeans swaying softly as she swung her feet, silky straightened hair brushing Sean’s cheek as she leaned in to whisper in his ear, and he wonders why the hell it took him so long to figure out.

“Language,” he says, now, pointing at Sean with the pointy pointer finger of the hand holding the beer bottle. Finger of doom, he thinks and muffles a titter. The third beer might have been more than he really needed, with his level of exhaustion.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sean says, the words incongruous, for some reason, in that light, half-childish timbre, although Tim’s own foul mouth is more than half Sean’s fault, really. Tim remembers how impressed he’d been the first time he’d heard Sean cuss, neatly, naturally, heard him use the words Mr. Murphy had carried home from prison as they stood in scrubby grass on the edge of Memorial Park and Sean kicked at the flat tire on Tim’s bike.

“You should see the other guy,” Tim says, and his grin is mirthless this time, thinking about Omar, Fucking _Omar_ , the impact of his boots and the sound of his voice as he yelled about being lied to, about how everybody fucking _lies_ , and everything too bright and loud and fast, time slowed down.

Sean looks skeptical, although he straightens so he’s not looming over Tim, still studying him closely. Tim closes his eyes again.

“That’s you, isn’t it, Tim?” Sean says, and the tone, the inflection, is so familiar, only the pitch of Sean’s unbroken voice to remind Tim, in the cocoon of darkness behind closed eyelids, that Murphy’s not actually here.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s me.”

Sean’s silent for a few minutes, probably looking around, taking in Tim’s living room, the threadbare couch, the recliner that’s the only legacy of Tim’s apartment with Ellie - it’s not like she’d have wanted the thing, anyway, it didn’t match her idea of interior decorating - and the struggling plant in one corner. That poor thing’s gonna be dead by the time it’s warm enough to sit it outside; they always thrive out on the balcony during summers of benign neglect, growing lush and green and tangled, before husking away to straw and ropy stems through the winters as Tim actually tries to take care of them. He remembers Ellie telling him he’d had the blackest thumb she’d ever seen, remembers how she used to smack him with a dishtowel in fond exasperation when he’d pretend to poke his fingers in the soil of the ferns she carefully tended in the corners of their living room.

“What do you even _do_ , that you’re getting the shit kicked out of you all the time, anyway?” Sean’s voice breaks his reverie. “Are you in the army or something?”

Tim can hear in Sean’s voice how incredible he finds this idea, because, yeah. Even at this age, he’d know Tim. But he supposes the army is the first thing that would come to Sean’s mind, particularly at this age, when Marjorie Murphy’s youngest brother would only be, what? Half a year back from Vietnam? Sean’s Uncle Mike would be sitting in the basement of his parents’ house over in Wethersfield, would be sitting there for another year, at least, drinking beer and looking a little wild around the eyes.

“I work in a prison,” Tim says finally, opening his eyes to look into Sean’s face, which looks absurdly heartbroken as he sits abruptly on the edge of the coffee table facing Tim, and Tim sits up just as suddenly, grabbing for the arm of the couch to steady himself as the room swims around him.

“Oh,” Sean says.

“What?”

“It’s just ... it seemed like you planned to get out of Attica.”

“Sean, I’m not in Attica, anymore. _We’re_ not in Attica, anymore.”

“It sure sounds like it,” Sean says, and he looks up at Tim, but Tim can’t catch his eye, because Sean’s studying the bruises on Tim’s face, the swollen lip, before his eyes slide down to the bottle in Tim’s hand.

Every time Sean’s shown up, Tim’s been drunk or stoned out of his mind, he realizes, and sure, he had an excuse in the hospital, but he’s suddenly uncomfortable about it. He doesn’t want Sean to think he’s turned into one of those slugs who leaves the prison everyday and heads straight for the bar or the six-pack in the fridge. Tim’s got a strict three-beer limit, goddammit.

Although he’s not sure why he’s worrying about what some kind of drug- and alcohol-influenced hallucination thinks of him, anyway.

“What are you doing here?” he says, falling back against the couch cushions with a jolt that makes him groan against the pull of blood leaked hot and messy under his skin, already mottled across his belly, bone deep, aching like a rotten tooth.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Sean says, tone laced with familiar impatience. “I told you - I woke up, and I was at the hospital, and I woke up, and I was here. You were ... asleep, both times. And when I finally fell asleep again, I woke back up in my own room. In my own ... time.”

Sean’s been staring at the floor as he speaks, quick, clipped, like a recitation of unpleasant facts, like an incident report, but he raises to his eyes to watch Tim’s face on the last word, hesitant, like Tim’s going to think he’s crazy. Given he’s standing in Tim’s apartment, 12 years old and 30 years out of place, Tim’s not sure whose stability to doubt.

“So who’s Gloria, anyway?” Sean continues, casual, eyes sliding away from Tim’s to check out the ceiling, the crowded and messy bookshelves, the stack of 3-month-old paperwork haphazardly tucked together on the end table at Tim’s elbow. “You mentioned her last time. Said she’d come to see you in the hospital. Is she your girlfriend?”

The look Sean gives Tim’s living room says it’s nowhere suitable for a seduction. Of course, Sean’s 12, and what the fuck does he know about seduction, Tim wonders, uncharitable and unrepentant for it.

“Not ... exactly,” he tells Sean. “No. No, she’s not.”

“Huh.” Sean seems pensive, and they sit in silence for a few minutes, Tim allowing his eyes to fall closed again under the weight of the alcohol and the lassitude of an adrenaline hangover. “So, who’s Omar?”

Tim groans and slings an arm over his face, hissing against the pull of bruises over his ribs, hot and messy underneath the skin of his stomach, and wills sleep to come.

He watches Murphy the next day, in the locker room, watches him on the basketball court, watches the way the muscles shift in his arms and his back when Murphy goes up for a shot, notes the growing softness of his belly, his hips, all the places that used to be lean with muscle back when Sean was spending four, five, six nights a week at the gym or in the ring, now getting softer, more comfortable, settling in, somehow.

“What?” Murphy asks, looking up to meet his eyes, jamming on his street shoes after their practice game without bothering to undo the laces. “You’re studying me like you don’t see me every day. What’s going on in there?”

He knocks lightly against Tim’s temple with a loose fist, walking back to the locker room mirror to check his reflection, and Tim comes to stand behind him, looking over his shoulder, studying their faces in the mirror, his own furrowed brow, the long stretch of Murphy’s forehead. Murphy’s hair is getting long at the nape of his neck, curling up the slightest bit, and Tim tugs at it, thinking about messy curls kicked out from under the back of a knitted cap, about James Murphy’s bald spot, and Sean leans back into his touch, briefly, almost imperceptible, before he shifts forward to rinse his hands in the sink.

•••

Sean’s sitting on Tim’s doorstep when Tim fumbles out of the backseat of the cab, sending a bolt of panic through Tim that almost cuts through the five shots of whisky, because _Murphy_ is in the cab behind him, Murphy’s the one who poked him awake when they pulled up on Tim’s corner, hand curled warm around the nape of Tim’s neck, he’s the one who dragged Tim out in the first place and bought him at least three rounds and finally pulled the Story of Ellie out of Tim, now that the two of them have met face to face, now that Ellie’s back, now that she’s in Oz. Tim slams the cab door, and Murphy knocks twice on the glass inside before it pulls away, a soft goodbye, and Tim lifts a hand - carefully, whoops - behind him, his eyes still on the skinny figure sitting cross-legged on the front stoop, head leaned back against the door and eyes closed like he’s gone back to sleep, in _this_ neighborhood, for God’s sake.

Tim’s grateful for the distraction of the alcohol in his bloodstream, because he doesn’t really want to examine the flare of relief as the cab pulls away, doesn’t want to think about whether he was more worried Sean would disappear if Murphy came to Tim’s door, or that he _wouldn’t_. He doesn’t want to think about whether he wants a teenaged version of Murphy on his doorstep more than the real thing, or why.

Sean stands and slings his backpack over his shoulder as Tim picks carefully toward the door, toward him, a backpack that - if Tim is judging his age right, remembering properly, should be middleweight with a physical sciences book, a world studies text that spans the Crusades to da Vinci, and maybe a battered, second-hand copy of whatever that crap book had been they’d had to read in eighth-grade language arts, with the girl whose father died, who swore she’d never let anyone take away her little brothers and sisters, as God was her witness, or something, so they spent a winter starving in the goddamn hillbilly mountains on the strength of her word and self-sufficiency. Tim remembers throwing that book across his room at three different points, trying to slog his way through it, it was so boring and stupid, and anyway, if he wanted to see hillbilly poverty, it’s not like he had to read some dumb book that romanticized it, not in the foothills of Western New York.

And possibly the whole self-sufficiency and family togetherness thing was a little too formative for Sean, now that he thinks of it.

“Where’s your hat?” he asks, because it’s starting to get cooler, and Sean’s summer buzzcut hasn’t finished growing out, and Tim thinks about chilly lake-effect winds scudding through downtown Attica, snaking frigid fingers under his collar before he could get the door of the diner open and slip inside.

“Where’s your _hair_?” Sean asks.

Fuck off, Tim almost says, companionably, before he stops himself. He fumbles with his keys, instead; the autumn chill feels distant, muffled outside a cocoon of whiskey.

“It’s not like I knew I was showing up, did I?” Sean says, finally, as Tim gets the key in the lock, finally. “I fall asleep, I wake up, here I am. I would have planned better if I knew.”

“At least you’re not in your pajamas,” Tim says, surveying the worn jeans and striped rugby shirt that wouldn’t even look out of place and old-fashioned anymore, not like they would have 10 years ago, before the fashion vagaries of the ‘70s rolled around again. Tim can’t quite figure out why he’s expected to turn on a dime and embrace the childhood styles he’d spent the late ‘80s mocking. But, then, Ellie always did despair of his fashion sense and vetted any of his thankfully few suits, her helpless, teasing laughter the best barometer of what he shouldn’t buy.

He winces at the thought like staples pulling against tender skin, edges of the wound newly opened, stretched and raw.

“I don’t sleep in pajamas, anymore,” Sean says, giving him a look, effortlessly eloquent. “Who knows where I’m going to end up when I wake up? I might as well have on pants, just in case, right?’

“So you _are_ planning for this. Don’t look at me like that. Are you coming in or not?”

“Where’s the bathroom?” Sean asks, brushing past Tim, lean and lanky with the beginnings of his growth spurt, all awkward angles and pointy elbows. “I thought I was only waking up to pee. It took you _forever_ to get home.”

Tim snoops in the backpack while Sean’s in the bathroom - come on, he thinks, to himself, like he’s not going to? Who wouldn’t? He’s surprised he doesn’t get caught - he always gets caught, particularly by Murphy, who’s never let him get away with anything ... well, OK, Murphy lets him get away with pretty much everything, but not without pissing and moaning and calling Tim on it before standing back and letting him do it, before cleaning up what mess he can. So Tim’s expecting Sean to walk out and catch him any minute, but then, even if this is Sean, he still can’t be more than 13, and how hard can it be to outwit a 13-year-old? Maybe Tim should feel like a creep, snooping in a 13-year-old’s school bookbag, but he’s not sure about the privacy issues involved when you’re having this kind of lucid hallucination, or, alternately, being visited by the childhood version of your oldest friend who seems to have _time-traveled 30 years_ to see you. Tim doesn’t know what Miss Manners would say about the etiquette of this situation, and he’s not sure he’d give a damn, anyway. And goddamn, it’s not like Tim’s stealing Sean’s candy, or something.

His fingers tangle in the edges of the backpack after he unzips it - it’s surprisingly solid for a figment of his imagination, heavy canvas, rubbed blue on one side where it’s ridden every day against Sean’s jeans, and a singe mark Tim remembers from a fire they’d built out at Tunnery Brook to ritually burn some test on Dark Ages Europe they’d both fucked the hell out of - Tim had expected Sean, ever the Boy Scout, to rub two sticks together, honestly, but he’d just whipped out one of his Pop’s disposable Bics that he’d made off with. He’d been kind of a firebug for a couple of months, that last year of junior high.

Sure enough, there’s a world studies textbook inside the backpack, covered with a taped-up brown paper bag, containing the Black Death and the de Medici - no one exposed Tim to Dante or told him about Savonarola until college - and a battered copy of _Where The Lilies Bloom_ , yeah, that was the name of that damn book. There’s another book at the bottom - thick, heavy despite its paperback cover, corners rounded and edges gone soft, and Tim pulls it out to trace two fingers over the scrolling title. So, 13 years old, then - then and _now_ \- that was the year they spent reading and re-reading _Watership Down_ , trading off that book back and forth for six months, and when Sean took it back to the library, Tim checked it out for the next two weeks, and vice versa, over and over. Sean must have read it twice, and Tim was working his way through it for the third time when someone else snuck in under Tim’s nose and snagged it off the library shelves before he could make it into the library on Sean’s heels. Sean’s Ma had threatened to smack both of them if they didn’t stop calling little Aidan “Fiver,” and they’d spent weeks muttering “silflay hraka” under parental noses every time something pissed them off.

 _Tharn_ , he thinks, suddenly, remembering Sean’s big eyes and poised stillness in the hospital.

With the resilience of youth, Sean’s recovered from whatever stupefaction his _trip through time_ first left him dealing with, and when he emerges from the bathroom to find Tim sitting innocently in the recliner, hands to himself, he wanders into the kitchen and starts poking in the refrigerator, of course.

“Why do you only show up when I’m drunk?” Tim asks, squinting at the top of Sean’s head.

“Why are you always drunk when I show up?”

“I wasn’t drunk the first couple of times,” Tim protests, and Sean pauses to peer at him over the edge of the refrigerator door with one eye before he goes back to shuffling around the jars of olives and mustard Tim keeps in there.

“Right,” he says. “You were _stoned_.”

“I was in the _hospital_.”

“Do you have _anything_ worth eating?” Sean sounds exasperated.

Tim tries to think what he’s got in there. Nothing, apparently, because Sean rolls his eyes and shuts the door before his gaze lights on the package of bread sitting on top of the fridge. He eats it, plain, right out of the package, as he leans against the counter, legs crossed at the ankle, but not without mocking Tim’s fancypants tastes first. It’s just plain old honey wheat with flaxseed in it, but they’d grown up on Wonder bread, Tim remembers - Wonder bread and Kraft singles and Kool-Aid and Campbell’s soup of a dozen different flavors. He remembers the crunch between his teeth and the touch of vinegar on his tongue from the pickle slices Sean put in the middle of grilled cheese sandwiches before smushing the sides back together, remembers fingers greasy with margarine as Sean broke a sandwich in half and offered it to Aidan and Carly, urging Carly to eat something while his Ma heated tomato soup in a metal pot on the stove behind them.

Metal pot, he thinks, trying to remember why that might be important, and looks over to see Sean poking at the display on the front of the microwave, brow furrowed, and _oh_.

That.

“Don’t ... Sean, don’t touch that ... ow, _fuck_.” He barks a shin, hard, on the corner of the coffee table as he stumbles to stand in front of the microwave.

Sean studies him for a minute, eyes narrowed, wheels clearly turning in his head as he folds over another piece of bread and stuffs it in his mouth.

“Really,” he says once he chews and swallows, and it’s not even a question. He wanders into the living room, pausing to run a finger across the spines on one bookshelf, a mishmash of Guevara and Campbell and Whitman and Said, before he bends over to pick up the DVD remote.

“Don’t ... just, don’t touch that either,” Tim says, snatching it out of his hand.

Tim practically leaps over to his crappy dining room table - second-hand like the sofa, scavenged at the local Habitat for Humanity store after Ellie kept the decent dining set - and slams his laptop closed as Sean bends over it, tilting his head, brow furrowed again.

“Don’t look at that!”

“Geez, man, I’m not gonna break your stuff,” Sean says, and he sounds pissed, and Tim realizes he doesn’t even know how to talk to this kid, this kid he remembers but who looks so different from how he remembers, who looks so much more fragile than he did to a 13-year-old Tim.

“It’s not that,” he says. “It’s just ... you ... you’re _13_. You’re from the _past_. And you’re gonna go back, right? I mean, you went back last time, so my assumption is that you’ll be going back again. And what if you see something from now, and you go back, and you cause some kind of ... of time paradox?”

Sean blinks at him.

All that sounded much more logical in Tim’s head. Of course, it also helps if you discount the fact that he’s talking to what has to be a _figment of his imagination_. He drops down onto the couch and scrubs his face with both hands. He is ... really drunk, he realizes, out past the point of being tipsy, out to the hardcore drunkenness that almost feels like sobriety until you hit the morning-after regret and realize you weren’t anywhere near your right mind.

“I am really drunk,” he informs the living room.

“How are you still this much of a dork?” Sean sounds almost impressed at Tim’s idiocy. “A _time paradox_?”

“You could learn something you shouldn’t know and go back and tell someone about the microwave or the laptop or whatever, and .... shit. _Shit_. Just ... just forget I told you what those are called, OK?”

Sean continues to stare at him, bag of bread hanging forgotten in one hand, familiar look of disbelief on a baby face. He may seem smaller than Tim remembers him being - even with the new length of leg and torso since he first appeared in Tim’s hospital room out of the deep recesses of Tim’s mind, or wherever the hell he came from - but clearly he’s experienced enough of Tim in his own time, or wherever the hell he came from, to be used to the flailing hands, used enough to stay unfazed in the face of them from a guy who’s a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier and 30 years older than usual. Of course, Sean always was kind of unimpressed by Tim’s theatrics, it’s one of the reasons he’s what Tim’s mother calls a “grounding influence.” Like Teresa, the law student Tim dated in grad school, was supposed to be. Or Ellie.

Well, Tim supposes one out of three isn’t a bad record, as far as your mother’s expectations go.

Sean, now - well, Sean now _and_ then - Sean’s always been supremely unfazed by Tim’s drama, and sometimes the impassive treatment worked. Sometimes, of course, it only goaded Tim into a bigger fit, looking for a reaction.

“Are you serious?” Sean says now, and he’s got his hands on his hips, that oddly prissy gesture he still falls into sometimes, now, the older version of him, and it looks even more old-maidish than Tim remembers on his 13-year-old self. The half-empty bag of bread bumps against his thigh, clenched in one fist. “Who am I gonna tell? You think I’m gonna _tell_ anyone that I’m ... what? Traveling in time to see some kid in my English class when he’s a grownup?”

“English and world studies,” Tim mutters, petulant, vaguely hurt. Is that all he is to Sean? Some kid in his English class?

 _What the fuck is wrong with you, Tim?_ says a voice in his head, and he’d steal a Beretta from one of the SORT humps and kneecap himself before he’d admit it to anyone, but it sounds an awful lot like Ellie. _You’re acting like a child. Again._

“They’d stick me in the looney bin,” Sean says, looking at Tim like that’s where _Tim_ belongs, and Tim’s not sure he’s wrong, given he’s talking to his childhood friend who’s either a figment of his imagination or who _traveled forward 30 years in time_.

“You could still ... I don’t know ... _do_ something.”

“Like what?” Sean throws up his hands, matching Tim’s gesture in a way that could be equal frustration or could just be mockery. “Build some kind of radioactive breadbox out of spare parts from my uncle’s garage? How are you _still_ this much of a dork?” He flops onto the couch, tossing the bread aside barely in time to keep from squashing it.

“Pass that over,” Tim says and pulls out his own slice when Sean complies.

The pair of them sit in silence for a couple of minutes, Tim chewing, hoping the bread will soak up some of the alcohol in his system, Sean moodily picking at a frayed patch forming in the knee of his jeans.

“Also, what the hell, man?” Sean finally says, rolling his head on the back of the couch to look at Tim. “You shouldn’t have radioactive stuff in your house. That can’t be good for you. That’s what microwaves are, right? Radioactive rays and stuff?”

“I can’t believe you never told me about any of this,” Tim says, studying him.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to cause a time paradox,” Sean says, and Tim doesn’t think there’s really any reason for him to sound so snotty.

“I don’t see what your problem is. You’re the one getting to travel in time.”

“Wow, coming to see some old guy who claims to be one of my friends from school. No offense, or anything. But wow, does that sound like a really cool time, or what? What?”

Tim muffles a laugh.

“Groovy stuff,” he responds, instead.

“Ma was pissed last time, you know. I got grounded for sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night.”

“Christ, I am drunk,” Tim informs the living room and rubs at his face with both hands.

“Language,” Sean says and smirks at him when Tim spreads his fingers to shoot him a narrowed look.

“I’m also, apparently, contributing to the delinquency of a minor. How exactly _do_ we get you home?”

Sean chews on his lower lip for a minute before he answers, hesitant, like he’s feeling his way through a word problem in math class, two trains leaving different stations on opposite tracks.

“You’ve always fallen asleep before, and then, I fall asleep, and then, when I wake up, I’m back. It works almost the same way as when I show up here. I think, maybe, I have to make sure you’re asleep before I can leave?”

“You have to _tuck me in_ before you can go,” Tim says, droll, amazed at the ridiculousness of his own subconscious, and it’s not even a question, and Sean scowls at him. “Are there cookies? Maybe some warm milk?”

“Hey, I didn’t ask to show up here.”

“No, OK, fine,” Tim says and swings his feet up onto the couch, digging his toes into Sean’s thigh. “Move.”

“What are you doing? Quit it.” Sean smacks at him with the carefully conditioned reflexes of a kid with multiple brothers and sisters.

“Stop that. I’m going to sleep. It’s like 3 a.m., and you should be home in bed.” Tim arranges himself and stares at the inside of his eyelids for a minute, but it’s too late. He’s past the lazy, passing-out stage of inebriation and onto the point where the alcohol fucks with his sleep cycle, keeping him up or rousing him from sleep at godawful hours so that he drags around like a zombie the day after. “This isn’t working. Read something to me.”

“What?”

“Tell me a bedtime story.”

He enunciates clearly, half-mocking, and Sean pinches his toes, and Tim kicks back at him before Sean gets up to dig in his bag, and Tim eventually drifts off to the tale of Rabscuttle and the King’s Lettuce. When he wakes up in the morning, he doesn’t remember eating, but he finds a plate in the kitchen sink, crumbs scattered across its surface, and a glass sitting square in the center, a cloudy film of milk at the bottom. Half his loaf of bread is gone, he realizes, as he pulls the bag down to make toast.

•••

Warm sunset light slants across Tim’s face as he wakes to find Sean watching the television with the same skeptical eye he usually turns on Tim, and Tim stares at the screen for a minute, himself, still muzzy, before he realizes there’s about 10 minutes left of _Donnie Darko_.

“This movie is fucked up,” Sean says when he realizes Tim’s awake. His expression is an equal mix of horrified fascination and indignation. “You like this?”

“I’ve been studying up on time travel,” Tim says, like it’s some kind of explanation, and he has, gravitational dilation and cosmic string and worldlines, spacetime looping in on itself and slowing down, warping and curving to conform to the bodies in its path, and he’s still no closer to understanding what’s going on, still suspicious this is all a hallucination, his brain and his subconscious fucking with him, thoughts stretching and pulling like taffy. He shifts under the warm cocoon of blanket he doesn’t remember pulling over himself before he fell asleep.

“You’ve turned out weird, man.” Sean waves his hand at the television. “I mean, am I supposed to be that scary-ass rabbit? Because you might be as fucked in the head as that guy, but the rabbit is just creepy.”

Tim pauses to marvel once again at the _mouth_ on teenaged Sean before he responds, deflecting.

“What are you doing here in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, anyway?”

Sean blinks against the stray ray of light falling into his eyes through the half-open blinds, and Tim wonders if it’s time to embrace the full-on psychotic break. He remembers he considered smoking up before he’d started the movie in the DVD player, half-hoping something like this might happen, but he doesn’t think he actually did it. What was the likelihood Sean would be sleeping on a Saturday afternoon, their timelines oddly parallel while 30 years apart? It’s the only rule they’ve been able to figure out, so far, that they both have to be asleep - well, that and Tim being drunk or stoned out of his mind, out past the point of tipsy, out to the hardcore inebriation that you don’t even appreciate until you hit the morning-after regret. But that seems to be maybe not so much the case, because he’s sitting here stone-cold sober, if you discount the sleep-drunkenness from a mid-afternoon nap, disoriented and blinking, dazed stupor made deeper by the warm nest of blankets and the weight of Sean’s thigh on top of Tim’s toes through the blanket, and how in the fuck can the weight of him feel so real when Tim’s sober? He wonders if maybe he’s still asleep, if he’s dreaming, if all of this has been a dream, or dreams.

“Hiding out,” Sean answers, finally, picking absently at a cuticle, eyes still on the TV screen and nose wrinkled. “Pop’s on the warpath again. I must have fallen asleep at ...” He pauses, slanting a look at Tim. “At your house.”

Tim tries to remember, but there were a lot of weekend afternoons Sean spent at his place, rainy days they couldn’t escape to the park or the woods behind the lumber mills or the falls outside of town. He wonders if Sean’s _gone_ from Tim’s bedroom, back there in time, back in Attica, or if he’s lying there dreaming, and if the younger version of Tim will notice anything different. But no, Sean said he was grounded once, because he wasn’t in the house in the middle of the night, he was here with Tim, instead. Tim doesn’t remember anything, from back then, but then, he’s been told he’s not the most observant guy when it comes to the stuff other people have going on. He’s been told that more than once, so he maybe has to think there’s at least a little bit to it, sometimes, at least.

“Do you think there’s a Mini-Me somewhere right now, bugging the shit out of you over at your place?” Belatedly, Tim realizes Sean won’t even get that reference.

“I could leave, you know.” Sean gives him a wounded look.

“Don’t be like that.”

Sean sits slumped into the corner of the couch, lower lip poked out, until Tim jabs him with a toe, and then he turns a glare on Tim.

“Well, do you _remember_ bugging the shit out of a giantass version of me?” he finally asks Tim.

“No.” Tim thinks for a minute. “Does the you, now, remember this, from then?”

“How should I know?” Sean shrugs, pulling absently at a loose thread on the edge of Tim’s blanket. “I know it’s happening _now_. How am I supposed to know what I think or remember 30 years from now?”

“Thirty years from now, is _now_ ,” Tim says. “At least for me.”

“Maybe I think it’s all dreams,” Sean says, and he won’t meet Tim’s eyes, staring blankly at the credits rolling up the TV screen.

Sean’s ravaged the pizza Tim left mostly uneaten when he fell asleep, and he finishes off the last two slices as the sun dips below the horizon; Tim lies there in the stupor of an afternoon nap gone wrong, the kind that leaves him logy and stupid, and pokes at his feelings about Sean wandering around the apartment while Tim’s asleep. He can’t find the energy to care, much. He can’t imagine Sean would have the technical know-how to access his porn collection on the laptop. He briefly considers taking Sean out to eat something other than cold pizza, but Sean seems oddly content to sit sprawled in the corner of Tim’s couch taking care of his leftovers, and Tim can’t shake the thought that Sean might puff into nothingness if they try to go anywhere else. He remembers coming home to find Sean camped on his front stoop because he’d shown up here, instead of in the cab where Tim actually had fallen asleep, with Murphy beside him. Or, well, kind of underneath him, from the way Murphy wouldn’t shut up the next day about Tim drooling on him in his sleep.

“How’s Gloria?” Sean asks, studiedly casual, around a mouthful of pizza. His features look sharp in the twilight and the blue glow of the television; Sean never carried much baby fat, Tim remembers, it wasn’t until they started getting older that Sean’s face softened, started getting more comfortable, settling in, somehow.

“That’s ... well, that’s off again.” Tim has made the shockingly self-aware discovery that he and Gloria somehow have mutated into something like fuckbuddies, willing to fall together for some comfort when they’re both stressed or confused or worried and at loose ends, when neither of them is obsessing about something - or someone - else, but he finds himself unwilling to explain this concept to Sean, although he knows Murphy went through - will go through? - a period of casual hookups the first time he moved away from Attica, while Tim was off at college in Albany, before Sean settled into his intermittent train of serial monogamous relationships.

Tim snorts at himself. Whose innocence is he protecting by refusing to talk about whatever he has - doesn’t have - going on with Gloria, he wonders.

“You want to hear about Omar?” he asks, instead, and tells Sean about the deal he made with Said to keep Omar on the straight-and-narrow.

“This is the guy who stabbed you and then kicked the shit out of you, right?” Sean asks, tone drier than a 13-year-old has any right to be.

“That’s not ... you’re not looking at this from the right angle,” Tim says, ignoring the memory of Gloria’s voice - _Tim, he STABBED you_ \- in his head. “I can’t just abandon him. If I give up on these guys, I might as well ... open up a diner somewhere and flip burgers until I die.”

“So, wait,” Sean says. “Speaking of dying, this is the guy who _stabbed you_ , right?”

He’s pulling apart the last piece of pizza, eating it layer by layer, and Tim wonders if he should order another one. He remembers this, remembers Sean burning fuel like there was no tomorrow, sturdy and growing, shoulders broadening, knows it’s only going to pick up in the next few years, running track and playing basketball and just starting to show some interest in the boxing, and eating whatever he could get his hands on. Sean’s Pop used to cook breakfast, Tim remembers, coming off the night shift, before he’d go to bed, puttering around the kitchen, going through a dozen eggs between Sean and Tim and the kids and sometimes Tommy, along with his own breakfast-style dinner, back before Carleen was gone and Sean’s Ma was gone and James Murphy got lost, before the cancer ate him alive from the inside out and left him unable to take care of himself. It was a tradeoff, Tim remembers - breakfast at the Murphy house, with eggs and sausage and toast, shoveled hastily together most mornings into a sandwich so it was portable for the dash to school, and then burgers and fries and probably some onion rings, too, at the diner in the afternoons, after track or basketball practice, before homework, something to tide them both over until dinner, and Tim’s dad would wave off Sean’s attempt to pay him something because Tim had breakfast that morning with the Murphys, and Tim would pretend he didn’t know Sean would take the chance to split his meatloaf at dinner between Aidan and Carly so they could have just a little bit more, because he wasn’t hungry, because he just ate at the diner with Tim. It wasn’t like the McManus family had that much more money, but they also only had Tim to feed.

He orders another pizza, thinking that Aidan and Carly will get some extra chicken casserole that night, back in 1974.

•••

Dave Brass runs off - and what a miserable turn of phrase that is, Tim thinks to himself - with Rebadow’s money, something even the other inmates had considered beyond the pale, back in the day - well, all of them except That Little Prick, Kenny Wangler - and Tim half wakes in the darkness of his bedroom to catch the gleam of Sean’s eyes, a pale and solemn face under a tangle of messy hair, quiet and so still, staring at him, sitting sentry by Tim’s bedside.

“Ghost of Christmas Fucking Past,” Tim manages to slur out, because come on, it’s kind of creepy, really.

“Yeah, well, it sounds like you still have me in the present, too,” Sean says, curiously watchful, settled in like he’s hibernating or meditating, or something. “And it sounds like you’re sure working on being pretty fucking miserable at some point, if you keep going the way you are.”

“Yeah, but you’ll still be with me in the future, too, won’t you?” Tim’s still half asleep, brain divorced from his mouth, and even he can’t believe how unpleasant he makes that sound, like he’s trying to hurt Sean, or maybe himself, with that knowledge, like it’s the worst outcome he can imagine, being stuck with him, stuck with _Tim_ , and even if he’s taking his shit out on 13-year-old, a probably imaginary 13-year-old, at least he has the decency to feel like a prick when Sean gets that look on his face, the look he’d have when his Pop took a swipe at him, stoic, that look Tim hated, and the idea Tim’s caused it makes him feel sick.

“Go back to sleep, Tim,” Sean says wearily, drawn in on himself. “And I can just go home.”

•••

Omar, Fucking _Omar_ , tries to choke Wolfgang Cutler to death, and Tim wakes that night in the darkness to the sound of light breaths beside him, Sean quiet and so still, still asleep, face turned away from Tim on the pillow on the other side of the bed, chest rising and falling steady and solid as he lies sprawled on top of the covers, one leg of his jeans rucked up to his knee, thick white socks baggy around his ankles, a hand flung out in Tim’s direction. Tim doesn’t even bother to wake him. His fingers feel too small, still fragile under Tim’s hand as Tim drifts back into sleep to the sound of his breaths.

•••

Tim wakes to the sound of something breaking, shattering, jerked out of sleep by a ceramic crash, a splintering of pieces.

He feels like someone’s punched him in the face.

Sean keeps getting a little bigger, a little broader, every time Tim sees him, he can spot it in the stark florescent lighting of the kitchen, when he sees Sean through the doorway, standing in the middle of the linoleum floor, fists clenched at his sides, poised and so still, too still, before he explodes into uncharacteristic violence, kicking at the shattered bits of what might be a plate on the floor. Tim can see the difference in his build, in the way he carries himself - they’d be starting high school in the fall, he thinks - but he’s still smaller than Tim remembers him being.

He’s also pissed off.

“Why do you keep bringing me here?” he yells at Tim, as Tim sits sleep-stupid on the couch, trying to get his brain to function, trying to understand what the _fuck_ is going on.

“I’m not,” he says, and there’s irritation laced all through his voice, he can tell, but Jesus, he needs a minute to get his bearings here, and his chest hurts, and his face is sore, and he feels like he’s been beaten with a baseball bat.

“Why else would I be coming here?” Sean’s still yelling, but his eyes have gone suspiciously bright. “I’m afraid to go to sleep, thanks to you. I don’t know where I’m going to be when I wake up. I think I’m going crazy.”

He slides down the wall outside the kitchen doorway and puts his head in his hands, threading his fingers through short curls, and yeah. Why else? Tim thinks. Why else would Sean keep coming here, why else would he keep showing up in Tim’s life, 30 years out of sync? What’s in it for Sean? He’s got no reason to be here, other than Tim.

Tim finally told his shrink, during his last appointment, made it sound like dreams, unwilling to admit his mind probably was conjuring up a 14-year-old boy to talk to his problems about. He’s not sure what he’s more reluctant to have her know - that he’s capable of this kind of vivid hallucination or that the only person he can seem to talk to is the 14-year-old version of a childhood friend.

 _Are you young again? In the dreams?_ she’d asked. She makes him uncomfortable. He thinks maybe she’s a lesbian. She doesn’t respond to his charm at all.

 _I’m my own age_ , he remembers telling her.

_Do you want to be young again?_

“You think it’s just the times you remember, but it’s not,” Sean says, voice ragged. “It’s _not_. Do you know how many times I’ve woken up here and you didn’t even wake up? You didn’t even know I was _here_.”

Tim rubs his face with both hands before he untangles himself from his blanket, stumbling to his feet to make his way to the kitchen.

“It’s OK, Sean,” he says, crouching in the doorway of the kitchen, examining Sean from a safe distance before he starts picking up the bigger pieces of broken plate on the floor. “It’s going to be OK. We’ll get this cleaned up, and then I can go back to sleep and get you home. It’s ... _ow_ , fuck.”

He pulls his fingers to his mouth instinctively, innate childish reaction to soothe the sting of the cut, and ends up caught, frozen by the rusty stains on his hands, still washed faint over one wrist, deeper and darker in the grooves of his fingers and his palms, life line, heart line, and he hears Sean catch his breath as he looks over at Tim. He thought about washing it all off before he came home, thought about washing it all off after he came home, but no matter how much he scrubbed he’s not sure he’d be able to get clean. He remembers rubbing his palms against his shirt, on his pants, and he can see the moment Sean takes in the blood-smeared patches on Tim’s chest and stomach, across his thighs, so much blood, can see Sean’s eyes widen, pupils dilating in something like panic, but that’s not right because Sean doesn’t panic, Sean doesn’t get panicked in a crisis. But Tim can hear the small, sharp intake of breath at the sight of Augustus Hill’s blood all over Tim, and then Sean’s beside him on the kitchen floor, light and fast, kneeling over him, hands quick and anxious, batting lightly at Tim like the feathery brush of moth wings as he pushes, tries to get inside the tight ball Tim’s curled himself into.

“It’s not mine,” Tim says, unwinding enough to give Sean that, at least, to grab at his hands, fighting his jerky movements, finally managing to get hold of his wrists, pulse beating rabbit fast against his fingertips, thrum of blood under thin skin, and Tim stops the patdown by sheer force, strangely stronger than Sean, who’s too small and so still, now that Tim’s holding him from motion. “It’s not mine. Sean, it’s not mine.”

Sean sits back on his heels and searches Tim’s face, wrists still trapped in the vice of Tim’s fingers

“Whose is it?” he asks, finally, twisting himself free, and then Tim feels the light touch on the back of his hand before Sean’s fingers insinuate themselves between his, unaccountably firm pressure from fragile bone under thin skin, holding on tight through the blood, and Tim leans forward, afraid he’s going to be sick.

He can’t cry, he’s so bad at that, but an agonized sound claws its way out of his throat, and then he’s swearing, low and steady, spitting out a stream of curses like he can spit out some of the pain with them, like spitting out copper and raw red meat. He remembers hot blood slick against his palms and the back of Hill’s gloves catching on his fingertips, the flex of tendons and the articulation of knuckles, and the bone-deep chill because it’s impossible to keep that goddamn prison warm, cold radiating up from the ground it sits on like the grave. He remembers everything drawn out and syrupy and slow, like time had thickened, stretched and warped around the bodies in its path, or maybe Tim was just moving so fast it felt like everything else was moving slow.

He stares down at his bloodstained hands and feels Sean’s hand cup the back of his head, cradling his skull, like a benediction, holding everything together, holding him together.

•••

It’s been a mostly unremarkable day in Oz - for Tim, at least - and so he’s not sure what’s going on when he wakes in the middle of the night, tensed like he’s straining to sense something just beyond the bounds of hearing, and rolls over to find Sean sitting with his back to the headboard of Tim’s bed, sharp-edged in darkness and the light of the street lamps outside the window, knees up and wrists hanging limply over them like a puppet with its strings cut.

It’s been a while; he looked for Sean in the center of the maze, but he wasn’t there, and Tim was surprised Sean didn’t show up at the retreat Tim’s been to, was surprised he made no appearance at all, no midnight visit in the shadowy corners of Tim’s room or Tim’s mind. Tim would have thought with all the processing he was doing, this shade of the past would take the time to appear, at least, but it seems Tim can’t even call up his own personal hallucination on a whim. Tim apparently dreams up a Sean that’s more resistant to giving in to him than the real one.

He’s here now, though, Sean’s here, sitting still, so still, in Tim’s bed, and Tim hauls himself up to sit next to him, back to the headboard beside him, confused and afraid suddenly to reach out and touch him, afraid his hand will pass right through him like a ghost.

“Sean?” he says and gets a disgustingly snotty sound in response before Sean rolls his head against the wall to meet Tim’s eyes, and that’s when Tim realizes Sean’s crying, silently, and oh, sweet Christ he’s bad at that, even worse than Tim, almost hyperventilating with the effort to hold in his muffled, shuddering gasps, and a bolt of adrenaline shocks through Tim, sets him scrambling to touch, frantic hands on Sean’s head, chest, back, trying to figure out what’s wrong, where he’s hurt, where he must be hurt, before he frames Sean’s face in his hands, forcing Sean to meet his eyes. “What _happened_?”

“Carly,” Sean says, and his face crumples, and shit, Tim thinks, shit, _shit_ , because he knew, he _knew_ , with the foresight of Cassandra, if only he’d stopped to think, and he should have expected this. He was there for it, there for the few short years of Carly’s listlessness and crankiness, the breathing that was always wet and snuffly, there for Sean’s constant attempts to coax her to eat, there for the headaches and the dry hacking, like she couldn’t manage to actually get up any of the junk clogging her lungs, there for the phone call in the middle of the night, and Sean and Tommy and Aidan at the McManus house as Mr. and Mrs. Murphy drove to County Community, unwilling even to wait for an ambulance - he’d been there for the whole thing, all of it, but in all this time that he’s been drawing Sean here, now - why ever and however he’d done it - he’d never once thought Sean would be propelled here by some trauma of his own.

But Sean’s here, now, awkward, half-sprawled across Tim’s lap where Tim’s hauled him close like he can keep Sean from shaking apart. Sean’s too old for this really, he doesn’t fit into Tim’s arms the way a kid would, graceless and not entirely comfortable, even though he won’t let go, his grip frantic as he winds his fingers in the collar of Tim’s threadbare T-shirt. His breath smells like cheap beer, like the Pabst that James Murphy always kept in the fridge, that it’d always been too easy to sneak a can or two from, once they’d started high school, and Christ, Tim thinks. _Jesus Christ_.

Sean’s getting older, Tim realizes. Time’s passing in Attica, too, back there, for Sean, not trapped in amber the way Tim thinks of those years, when everything seemed to move so slow, but maybe Tim was just moving so fast that everything else seemed slow.

Sean’s trembling in his arms, and Tim remembers how solid he’d always felt to Tim, even when his father died, even when Carly died. He remembers standing by Sean at the graveside, Sean with his hands fisted in his pockets, immovable as they lowered James and Marjorie Murphy’s little girl into the ground, as Tim butted a shoulder up against Sean and just stayed there, solid pressure against him. He hadn’t realized, maybe, how important that had been, hadn’t realized that maybe for a little while he’d felt as solid as Sean always seemed to him. He remembers a single tremor running through Sean, the same kind of tremors he can feel now, and Sean seems more fragile than Tim remembers, but that’s just because Tim’s so much bigger than he had been. Sean had held himself rigid until they’d gotten back to the Murphy house, and then he’d tried to shut himself in the room he and Tommy shared, hadn’t allowed in anyone except Tim. There’d been a screaming row about that, Sean telling Tommy that if he was ever home, if he ever stayed in the room any other time, he might have some right to complain about being shut out, and Tim had murmured low in his ear, come on, Sean, come on, it’s going to be OK, come on. He remembers pulling Sean outside, keeping a hand clenched in the cuff of Sean’s jacket all the way over to Tim’s house, remembers shaking his head at his mother’s silent look before shutting them up in his own bedroom, turning from the door to find Sean sitting on the edge of his bed, hands clenched in his lap, staring at nothing, until Tim sat beside him and touched his shoulder and then Sean had turned into Tim like he belonged there, like he already knew he’d fit into Tim’s chest, in Tim’s arms.

It was the first time Tim realized how to make someone feel better like that, the first time he understood how to comfort someone. He remembers Ellie telling him he gave the best hugs, remembers the way she’d burrow into his arms when she’d had a bad day at work, and the night she’d gotten the call that her great-aunt had died, the old lady who’d been like a grandmother to her, remembers the way he held her, sleepless, curled in their bed before she flew out to Michigan the next morning. He remembers opening the door to his shitty little apartment in Chicago to Teresa’s ashen face and the news about her brother’s motorcycle accident - they’d been over for three months, an ugly breakup that included screaming and broken dishes, from both sides, but she’d still instinctively turned up on his doorstep, she told him the next morning, looking pale and exhausted over a cup of tea.

He remembers standing in the musty, dusty living room of the Murphy house in Attica, the morning they buried James Murphy, remembers how solid Sean felt as Tim butted a shoulder up against him and just stayed there as they stood and looked out the living room window while grey dawn light filtered into the streets they’d grown up on. He remembers the moment Sean turned into him, 15 years old, sitting on the edge of his bed, fists unclenching, unlocking all that in Tim, and he’s always wondered how Sean had sensed that in him, when Tim didn’t even know it about himself, yet.

“Don’t make me go to sleep,” Sean says, voice low, breath hot and damp against Tim’s collarbone, and Tim cradles the back of Sean’s head in one palm. “I don’t want to go back.”

“It’s OK, Sean,” he says, “you’re going to be OK. Come here. Come on.”

He settles them both against the headboard, Sean still graceless and awkward against his shoulder, and he stays awake as long as he can after Sean drifts off, as if he could keep actually keep Sean here with him. He watches the grey light of dawn filter in, eyelids heavy, and he knows Sean will have to get up in a couple of hours, 30 years and 350 miles away, and put on his clothes for a funeral Mass.

When he wakes up with a sore neck from the awkward angle, he’s alone.

•••

Tim’s just fucking tired, bone-deep weariness like an ache, like a bruise on the bone, like something eating away at him from inside, and some days all he thinks he wants to do is shut himself away, defeat bitter on his tongue like blood, like copper and salt and raw, rotten meat. It’s no surprise that goddamn prison itself was poisoned, is still poison, toxic from the ground up, rotten with methylene chloride like a tooth pocketed with decay.

He remembers Said’s words during the riot - _the birthday party you never had_ \- and it was never that, he doesn’t think. He always had the best of intentions - well, almost always - but Tim knows better than most what they say about good intentions. Fucking _intentions_. Some days all he thinks he wants is to give it back, all of it, only the thought of someone else with their hands on it, Querns, even Murphy ... Well, Tim always was shit at sharing his toys, always wanted to be the one calling the shots. He makes a shitty god of his own domain, though, not godlike, no god could be so shocked, could have fallen so far from omniscience, an idol with feet of clay, even though he always had the best of intentions - well, almost always.

Look where your good intentions got us all, Said, he thinks and looks up to see Sean in the recliner, the chair tilted forward under his weight as he rests his elbows on his knees, leaning forward, hands clasped as he sits quiet and so still, studying Tim, face solemn.

“What?” Sean says quietly in the twilight, and Tim tries to remember if he bothered to scrounge through the medicine cabinet looking for a bottle with a couple of Vicodin still in the bottom, something to ease this ache in his chest like a bruise to the bone, like hot blood leaked messy and pressing against the inside of his skin, over his heart.

“Said’s dead,” he tells Sean listlessly. “And Omar.”

Omar, Fucking _Omar_ , dead finally for Tim’s grand intentions, and Said’s, too, for Said’s shot at redemption. _Don’t harm him_ , a last message delivered in Arif’s grief-stricken tones but still Said’s words, and so Tim had given on this last request, had given in, had honored this last thing, and so had Omar, Fucking _Omar_ , and look what it got him.

Fucking intentions.

Sean comes to sit beside him on the couch, his hand warm and a little clammy over Tim’s cold fingers, a secret pocket of warmth in the chill that’s settled in Tim’s apartment like the shadows hanging heavy in the corners, and Sean’s hands are bigger now, not quite as fragile, his shoulders broader and showing the results of basketball practice four nights a week, and in a few years, Tim thinks, there’ll be the muscle laid on in the ring when Sean starts boxing, filling out his chest and thighs. Things are moving faster, now - then _and_ now - or maybe Tim’s moving so slow that everything else just seems fast.

“Where am I?” Sean says. “If we’re still such good friends. Where am I, now?” and Tim shakes his head.

It’s not like he’s trying to keep them apart.

Right?

“Why do you think you always come here?” Tim says, after a couple of minutes tick by, rolling his head on the back of the couch to study Sean in the dim twilight. “I mean, why do you think I never get to go back?”

He’s read about the reasons why, of course, in the short survey he’s done of theories on time travel, knows the laws of physics warp more easily to accommodate the idea of forward travel than back, knows there’s some debate about whether backward time travel would be possible at all, and he supposes Sean’s returns are some kind of snapback effect, the universe reasserting its equilibrium.

Or it’s just one more way Tim’s subconscious is fucking him over, laying down arbitrary rules for these lucid hallucinations.

Either way makes him wistful.

“You can’t go back, man.” Sean pauses for a minute at that, and Tim thinks that his subconscious is really not subtle, but then Sean grins at him, small, almost mirthless, one corner of his mouth turning up. “You’d look like some kind of creepy perv following me around Attica. You know, the kind that likes touching boys.”

“ _I’m_ not the one who likes touching other guys,” Tim says, forgetting this Sean doesn’t know he knows.

Murphy’s still not out, even now, not really. He doesn’t hide anything, but he doesn’t expose anything either, and Tim gets that, because Sean’s a private guy, anyway, and Tim can understand not wanting to work with people like Claire Howell and Len LoPresti knowing, making everything a challenge. Everything would be about proving himself, over and over, and nothing would be about getting the job done. So Tim gets it, and the sudden catch of breath, the look of betrayal and fear in Sean’s eyes - they sting like a slap. Tim’s fingers go cold where Sean’s snatched away his hands, pulling them into clenched fists in his lap, leaning away from Tim, breaths quick and light with panic, and that’s wrong, that’s off, because Sean doesn’t panic, Sean doesn’t get panicked, even when he’s wary and a little freaked out - Aidan would have choked to death on a penny at 7 and Tim would have bled out on the cold concrete of Em City two and a half years ago if Sean panicked in a crisis. But this is panic, Tim can tell, because Sean was already good at hiding that sort of thing when they were 15, and he’s gotten better at it as they’ve grown up, but while 15-year-old Sean may have been good enough to fool 15-year-old Tim, he’s not good enough to fool 45-year-old Tim.

It’s possible Tim is a tiny bit, a very tiny bit less self-absorbed. Fifteen-year-olds are supposed to be self-absorbed, he supposes, something vaguely pinging from an undergrad child development class 25 years ago. He also supposes 45-year-old men are _not_ , and maybe it would be a good thing if he wasn’t right now, because Sean looks small again, too small, and too still, and Tim’s just letting him sit there and look like that, while Tim fucks around inside his own head.

“Hey, come on,” he says, sitting forward, touching Sean’s shoulder, and Sean’s fists unclench, and Sean turns into him, like he belongs there, like he knew he’d fit into Tim’s chest, in Tim’s arms, and he’s still awkward, gangly, he doesn’t fit quite right, but Tim holds him like he can hold everything together, like he can hold Sean together, like he can keep Sean from shaking apart, and he wonders why he ever thought Sean was showing up here, now, for Tim’s sake. “It’s OK, Sean. You’re going to be OK. We’re going to be OK.”

•••

Tim waits, two beers in from dinner and another on top of them because Murphy came in with him after the restaurant. He waits until Murphy’s gone home again, sits up and waits in the half-darkness, the blue glow of a muted TV lighting the living room. He waits, but Sean doesn’t show, and Tim dreams.

He walks through the darkened apartment and stands at the dresser in his bedroom, fists pressed to the wood surface, leans in and looks in the mirror, studies himself, and he’s a kid again, and he can’t see himself there, in that face, in the smooth cheeks and the unlined brow and the hair falling into his eyes.

That’s because it’s not you, anymore, Murphy says, appearing over his shoulder like he’s stepped out of nowhere, out of time, bending down so his face is beside Tim’s, looking over his shoulder, so they’re looking in the mirror side by side.

Where’s Sean? Tim asks him.

That’s not me anymore, either.

Tim turns to study him, face to face, and Murphy stands up straight, looking down at him, and Tim doesn’t remember ever being this young.

I kind of want to punch you in the face, he admits, and he can feel the echo of it, that shot of rage and adrenaline that left him light-headed and weak-kneed and chilled in the aftermath, ghost scent of blood across his tongue, and _awake_ , finally.

Murphy gives him a rueful grin.

I’ve spent the past few weeks wanting to punch myself in the face, he says. It’s one of the reasons I finally told Glynn what happened. What we did. What _I_ did.

One? Tim says and lifts a hesitant hand to Sean’s mouth, Sean’s breath feathering against his fingers, but Murphy slips neatly out from under his touch, lifting his own hand to circle Tim’s wrist like a vise, holding him away.

Don’t, he says. You need to be grown up for that, Tim.

Really, Tim says, dry in a way no 13-year-old should be, and it’s not even a question. That’s the best you’ve got?

Sean laughs, letting go of Tim’s wrist to take his hand.

Come on, Tim, he says. Keep up.

The last clear thing Tim remembers is Sean’s hand over his, Sean’s palm warm around his fingers, the steady thrum of blood measuring Sean’s heartbeat in his wrist, the flex of tendons and the articulation of knuckles, sturdy bone under sturdy skin.

He blinks awake as a shaft of sunlight filters through the blinds and across the pillows in the bedroom, lies staring at the ceiling for a couple of minutes, deliberately not thinking, and finally rolls his eyes.

His subconscious, he decides, wouldn’t recognize subtle if subtle bashed it in the back of the head with a brick.

•••

Tim stands at the dresser in his bedroom, fists pressed to the wood surface, and leans in, looks in the mirror, studies the drawn cheeks and the furrow in his brow and the long, _long_ stretch of his forehead. He watches himself, sharp-edged in darkness and the light of the street lamps outside the window, trying to figure out what he’s looking for until Murphy comes up behind him, warm hands and solid body - broader than Tim, if always a little shorter - and familiar. He’s still damp from a shower, towel riding low on his hips, and Tim studies him in the mirror, the softness of his belly, his hips, all the places that used to be lean with muscle getting more comfortable, settling in, settling into Tim, in all the places they seem to fit together as Sean fits himself against Tim’s back.

This thing between them, in some ways it’s old, almost as old as both of them, and folded in on itself, too. But some parts of it - this part, Tim thinks, feeling Sean press a kiss to his shoulder, eyes on the slope of Tim’s neck like he’s afraid to meet Tim’s gaze in the mirror - some parts of it are still new, tender like freshly healed skin and a little achy where it pulls at the edges. Tim remembers Ellie in his arms, in the center of the spiral, remembers her tears and her quick light breaths against his collarbone, remembers Diane’s fingers in his hair and Teresa’s smooth fingers pressed to his lips, and he feels a little like he’s lost in the maze. He remembers Sean, wide eyes and tangled hair, and it would be so much easier, what he was looking for when Sean would show up, the young Sean, appearing out of nowhere in the shadows of Tim’s apartment and Tim’s mind.

Murphy’s hands smooth over Tim’s shoulders, one arm dropping to wrap around Tim’s waist, firm pressure and calloused fingers and warm palm over the scar on Tim’s belly, neatly healed but twisted and still raised where the shank went in, and Tim turns to lift his own hand, fingers touching Sean’s mouth. Sean bites at his fingertips, small soft nips, barely concealed edge of teeth, and this is probably not healthy, Tim can’t help thinking. They’re probably too bound up in each other, one way or another, probably have been since they were kids - even with the time and the distance between them. Murphy’s always known it, it seems like, and Tim’s come to realize it. Tim’s history is too tangled up in Sean’s, in Sean, and Sean’s history is too tangled up in things Tim thought he’d left behind, thought he’d outgrown.

Tim told Howell the truth - he’s shit at commitment, except to his job. He’s shit at it, even with Murphy.

It’s just that Murphy won’t go away.

This is probably not healthy, Tim can’t help thinking, and it’s not like he deliberately kept them apart, right? But he knew going into this that sex with Murphy would mean something, he wouldn’t be able to make the same excuse he did with Howell or with Gloria, that he didn’t think it would mean that much. He can say he doesn’t want a serious relationship, but he’s already got one, pretty much the longest-term relationship he’s had in his goddamn life, barring his mother. Fuck’s sake, in a few more years, he’ll have known Sean for more years than he had his dad.

Tim’s a big enough boy, and he’s had enough therapy, to admit it was never the idea of being with another man that kept him from sleeping with Murphy. He likes women, he likes them a lot, but he also likes being wanted, and Sean gives him that. Tim’s way too old and tired to spare the energy for some kind of useless heterosexual freakout, and so he tries not to panic about the _feelings_ , because Sean wouldn’t panic, Sean doesn’t get panicked in a crisis, not even a midlife crisis, apparently, and he’s here, still here, like he’s been waiting for Tim to wake up.

What do you want, Sean had asked him the first time, what do you like? And, anything, Tim had said. Everything.

Tim’s a hedonist, he likes sex, he likes what makes him feel good, and that’s some pretty basic stuff, really. He likes being wanted, and Sean can give him that.

“Come back to bed,” Sean says, now, lips moving against Tim’s fingertips.

They rut lazily against each other once they fall onto Tim’s mattress - Tim wants to go again, at least he wants to want to, wants to be able to, but they’re not teenagers and despite the low, slow pleasure spreading through him, he thinks they’re pretty much done for the night. It wasn’t much, anyway, not tonight, more animal comfort and closeness than anything else, still stretched tender like new skin and an ache underneath, too, like a bruise on the bone, the memory of hot slick blood and the chill of concrete like the grave, Leo’s face slack and still like he was already in his coffin.

“Come here,” Tim says, “come on.”

He pulls Sean into him, fits Sean against him, around him, Sean’s head on his shoulder, breath slow and steady against Tim’s throat, Sean’s hand wrapped around Tim’s hip, thumb smoothing over the arch of bone, both of them the right size now, because this is the grownup Sean, and the grownup Tim, maybe, finally, the ones who fit each other in the right ways, who’ve grown into each other, warping time around their bodies in its path. Maybe this was inevitable, maybe this was where they were always headed. Tim thinks about Sean, 15 years old, on the edge of Tim’s bed, fists unclenching, unlocking something in Tim, turning into him like he knew he belonged there, like he already knew he’d fit into Tim’s chest, in Tim’s arms, and maybe they should have just ended up in bed to begin with.

What do you want, Sean had asked, and, anything, Tim had said. Everything.

Tim discovers he’s afraid to go to sleep, afraid of where he might find himself when he wakes up, afraid he might find himself alone.

“You’re still going to be here when I wake up, right?” he says.

“After all this time, what makes you think I’m going to disappear _now_?” Murphy asks, breath hot and moist against Tim’s collarbone.

Sean’s hands are the last thing Tim feels as he goes under, Sean’s hands on his, sturdy bone under sturdy skin, a secret pocket of warmth over his fingers in the dark.


End file.
